1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image receiving sheet for receiving an image thereon and an image transferring method for transferring an image onto the image receiving sheet and for retransferring the image thus transferred on the image receiving sheet onto an image receiving medium of an arbitrary type such as cloth, fabric, plain paper, wood plate, plastic films, etc.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 61-275742 discloses a conventional photosensitive image recording medium of a type which includes a base sheet and a microcapsule layer formed of a plurality of microcapsules each encapsulating therein silver halide, reducing agent, polymerizable compound, and color-forming material. The photosensitive image recording medium is selectively exposed to light, so that the microcapsules exposed to the light are started to be hardened, but those which are not exposed to the light remain unhardened. Thereafter, the photosensitive image recording medium is entirely uniformly heated, so that the hardening action of the microcapsules which have been exposed to the light is promoted. As a result, the microcapsules positioned at areas of the microcapsule layer exposed to the light are hardened, while those positioned at areas of the microcapsule layer which are not exposed to the light remain unhardened. (The light-unexposed areas will be referred to as "image areas", hereinafter.) In other words, the photosensitive image recording medium is exposed to an imaging light and is then uniformly heated, so that a latent image is formed in the microcapsule layer. The photosensitive image recording medium and an image receiving sheet are then introduced in a pressing device in such a manner that the photosensitive image recording medium is superposed on the image receiving sheet, with the microcapsule layer being contacted face to face with a surface of the image receiving sheet. The photosensitive image recording medium and the image receiving sheet are then pressed toward each other, so that the unhardened microcapsules positioned at the image areas are ruptured. The materials encapsulated in the microcapsules flow out of the ruptured microcapsules and are transferred onto the image receiving sheet. In other words, the materials encapsulated in the microcapsules positioned at the image areas of the microcapsule layer are transferred onto the image receiving sheet. Since the materials encapsulated in the microcapsules include the color-forming material which may present or develop color, a visible image corresponding to the latent image formed on the photosensitive image recording medium is transferred or formed on the image receiving sheet and is fixed thereto. The above-described conventional image transferring method is therefore capable of performing a high-sensitive image recording operation of dry type for recording a desired image on the image receiving sheet.
In the above-described conventional image transferring method, in order to prevent the visible image thus transferred on the image receiving sheet from being blurred, it is necessary to allow the color-forming materials encapsulated in the microcapsules positioned in each image area of the photosensitive image recording medium to be transferred only onto an area of the image receiving sheet corresponding to the each image area of the photosensitive image recording medium. More specifically to say, it is necessary to prevent the color-forming materials transferred on the image receiving sheet from spreading out of the areas of the image receiving sheet corresponding to the image areas of the photosensitive recording medium. In the conventional image transferring method, therefore, the image receiving sheet includes a support layer and a porous absorbing layer provided thereon. The porous absorbing layer serves to absorb the material (color-forming material, etc.) flown out of the ruptured microcapsules to retain them therein and serves to prevent the color-forming material from being spread over an undesired area onto which the colors should not be transferred. The porous absorbing layer is formed of particles of inorganic white color pigment such as zinc oxide, titanium oxide, zeolite, talc, clay or the like and binder such as polyvinyl alcohol, polyvinyl pyrrolidone, polyvinyl acetal or the like.
Since the porous absorbing layer includes the inorganic pigment as described above, light radiated on the porous absorbing layer is liable to be scattered or reflected thereat. Accordingly, the image receiving sheet thus coated with the porous absorbing layer has such a problem that it fails to attain a glossy and transparent surface.
The above-described conventional image transferring method further has a following problem. With the image transferring method, though it is possible to transfer the image formed on the photosensitive image recording medium onto the image receiving sheet, it is impossible to transfer the image onto an article of an arbitrary type having an arbitrary shape or size. For example, it is impossible to transfer the image onto a cloth having a too large size to be introduced into the pressing device.